


All of Them

by JessieMay



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, New Rick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 20:43:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14859959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessieMay/pseuds/JessieMay
Summary: Inspired by the events of 08x14. Negan makes it back to Sanctuary and finds that Rick has been captured. From the looks of it, the Saviors didn't wait for Negan before they started dealing out the punishment.





	All of Them

 

 

He’s already there.

Well damn. He’s gonna have to give a big pat on the back to whoever made that happen.

It was a whole team, he learns later.

“Roughed you up pretty good, huh? Didn’t pull any punches. Jesus.” Negan whistles.

Rick flinches and skitters back so fast Negan almost jumps.

“Whoa, whao, Rick. It’s just me. The man you been trying to kill for the last week.”

Rick stares at him from the corner of the cell. Even from beneath the grimy veil of curls, Negan can see the swelling of a black eye and busted lips.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that. You got yourself on a lot of people's shit list. Now, granted, I wouldn’t have dragged out a beating like this. I’d have just killed you quick and been done with it. Still. You gotta understand— these people lost friends, family. _You_ did that, Rick. You gotta admit you kinda earned this. Couldn’t just shut up and let shit roll, huh? _Christ,_ what a shiner.”

Rick hisses and jerks back again but he’s already in the corner.

“Hey! Hey! Calm down.” Negan withdraws his hand. “Just tryna get a look at you. Fuck. You made’em work for it, didn’t you? Bet you fought the whole way.” Despite himself, he can’t help the pride that creeps into his voice. Rick may be a reckless, murdering prick but he’s a fighter. Negan can respect that.

“So. You go around fucking up everybody’s hard work, get the whole world pissed off at you, leave a trail of death and destruction everywhere you go. And you got nothing to say now? That’s a fucking surprise.” When Rick only hisses through his nose and clamps his jaw tighter, Negan stands up. “Alright.” He sighs. “Can’t have you dropping dead before I get a chance to kill you. Get him up.”

Two Saviors come in and lift Rick by the arms. His hands are tied with rope behind his back and Negan is gonna have to have a talk with whoever’s idea that was. Rick may be a little too scrappy for his own good sometimes but you don’t beat on a bound man. Negan can’t be too mad though. Afterall Negan was dead for all they knew, and here was the man who killed him and wrecked their entire livelihood to boot. It was probably liberating as hell getting that little bit of vengeance in. Negan can’t deny he’d indulged in his own fantasies about what he’d do when he finally got his hands on the asshole responsible for all this. In Negan’s fantasies, the world stopped spinning and he had all the time he needed to express to Rick just how big of a shit's nest he’d made of everything Negan worked so hard to build.

All that seems a little redundant now though, Negan thinks as he watches Rick hobbling pitifully along, curly head slunk low and shoulders hunched, wrists bloody and bound behind him. Somehow, the victory isn’t as sweet as he’d hoped.

 

 

Negan waits outside the exam room.

He’d told the doc to make sure Rick was “healthy enough to kill.” Given Rick’s apparent condition, Negan isn’t sure how long something like that will take.

“That was fast,” he says when the doctor emerges ten minutes later with a put-upon expression. “Look, I know he’s an asshole, Doc, but we should probably treat him with something a little more potent than an Advil.”

The doctor proceeds to explain, and all the while Negan is listening he feels himself growing more irritated. Finally, he shoves past the older man and into the examination room, where Rick is sitting at the edge of the table, still clothed. He tenses at the sudden intrusion.

“So, you’re shy now, Rick? Don’t want the doctor to get a peek at your downstairs, is that it?”

Rick's lip tightens.

Negan feels fairly sure that shyness isn’t why Rick isn’t letting the doctor do his job. The doctor had said when he tried to check Rick, that the patient “exhibited signs of trauma.” Negan isn’t sure but he wouldn’t put it past his men, in their emotional state, to beat Rick’s junk just to make him hurt a little extra. The list of things he’s gonna have to talk with his men about just keeps getting longer.

When Rick doesn’t respond, Negan starts to worry that it might have been more than a beating. Before the Saviors, Negan briefly ran with a group of bad dudes that got off on mutilating people’s junk as punishment. Negan only had to see it happen once to know that that shit didn’t belong in the new world. Lucille didn’t have a taste for nads.

“Alright, Rick,” Negan says, feeling suddenly antsy. “You don’t fucking let this doctor do his job, I’m gonna have to call in a couple guys to hold you down. You want that?”

Those must have been the magic words because Rick looks up at him and Negan can see the muscles leap in his jaw.

“Alright, good,” Negan says. “Now I don’t want to hear any more about you being fucking difficult.”

He leaves and guesses he must’ve gotten the point across; the doctor doesn’t come out again for another forty-five minutes.

Negan is relieved when the door opens but senses something’s off. Before the doctor closes the door behind him, Negan catches a glimpse of Rick inside. He’s sitting on the table in one of those gowns. He looks pale and damp like he dunked his head under a faucet. He’s staring at the floor.

“What, he give you more trouble, doc?” Negan huffs when they’re alone in the hallway. It’s noncommittal; he doesn’t like the look on the old man’s face.

So, the doctor tells him.

“Multiple forced entries,” Negan hears himself repeat after a while.

“Yes.” The doctor nods.

“How…how many?”

The doctor shakes his head, “three, five,” he ventures. “Ten. Hard to say.”

Negan had felt like a blunt, sticky mass was slowly sinking in his throat since the doctor shut the door to speak in private. When he hears this it’s like it finally settles heavily in his stomach.

“It’s clear that whoever it was meant to do some damage, and succeeded.”

Negan stops hearing the doctor at some point.

 

 

Later, on the way back to the prisoner wing, Negan has Rick against the wall and is damn near screaming in his face.

He’d tried asking. He’d tried to be delicate, patient, backed off when he caught the guarded hike of Rick’s shoulders, but Rick isn’t giving him anything and Negan is out of patience.

“Who, Rick? Who? Give me the names,” he barks. But the bastard is so damn obdurate he just clamps up tighter, staring hard at Negan.

“Goddammit, Rick. This isn’t a fucking game.” Negan’s about to lose it— _really_ lose it. Put a dent in the wall by Rick’s ear, scream in his face. He doesn’t care how tensed up Rick’ is, how his chest is heaving and air is hissing rapidly through his nose. He doesn’t care how messed up it is to go off on a man who just endured what Rick did. He’ll risk being an asshole to get the names of the men who did it. Suddenly he stops, because Rick says something.

“What?” Negan says, feeling all the blood that had rushed to his head moments ago begin to slowly trickle out.

Rick stares him dead in the eye. “ _All of' em_.” He grits out again, before clamping up tight once more.

Negan feels himself drifting backward, his hands sliding down the wall as he recedes. “All…all of them,” he says.

Rick holds his eyes with that feral blue, never blinking. His nose flares like a beast as he pushes out hot breath. He doesn’t say it again.

Negan takes Rick back to his cell.

 

 

In all it’s eleven of them there on their knees. Negan heard that was the crew that caught Rick.

When Negan brings Rick down to confirm it, Rick says nothing. Like before, his eyes blaze and his mouth twitches in its firm line. After his eyes make one long heavy sweep of the group, they lock firmly on Negan and the Savior understands.

He nods to his men to take Rick up to the balcony.

Negan wants him to have a good seat. He needs Rick to see that Negan doesn't just let shit like that slide. Negan follows through. Negan fixes. Negan _saves._ He needs Rick to see that despite everything between them, Negan is a man of principles, and that’s never changed. His hard-set rules extend to Rick’s crew, _and_  to Negan’s.

“Hey! Hey!” Jonas, who’s just caught on to what’s happening, starts to fight the Savior holding him down. “Hey, I didn’t do anything! I didn’t do anything! I don’t know what the fuck this is!”

“Hey, yeah, I wasn’t even there!” Rothgery pipes up. “I had nothing to do with this! He’s fucking lying, Negan!”

More start up after that, and soon the whole line is shouting over each other and Negan has to shut them up with a snap. In the blessed silence that follows, he closes his eyes, holds Lucille, and prays for strength.

When he’s ready, Negan goes to one end of the line. He doesn’t drag it out, doesn’t build it up. He has no speech prepared. It’s business. He just can’t have that shit.

Jerome is first. He’s one of the newest recruits. Fiercely loyal. Negan had expected that the first one would be the hardest. It gets a little easier after that. Most of them cry. When he gets to Shawn, one of their youngest, Negan hesitates. The scrawny blonde is actually blubbering. He keeps saying he had nothing to do with it. He won't shut up. Finally Negan barks at him to pull it together. “This how you want to go out, son? Be a fucking man!”

Then the boy tucks in his lip and shuts his eyes. He doesn’t make a sound as the first blow comes down, and Negan feels a swell of pride.

After that, Negan goes through the line without a hitch. There’re a few more protests, some begging. When it gets hard, Negan looks up to the balcony, where Rick is watching. The man is still, but the lines of his body seem to vibrate like living energy. His jaw is tight, nose flared, fists clenched. His breaths are short and every muscle in his body looks taut and ready to snap. Even from this distance, Negan can see the blue eyes blazing in their red sockets, wide and unblinking just like they must have looked all that night as he fought in his binds against the cowards who outnumbered him. From the ugly bruises and swelling, Negan knows that Rick fought hard. Every time he imagines Rick like that, the Savior feels emboldened in his course of action. The dulling fire in him is all at once set ablaze.

He continues.

At long last, Negan gets to the end of the line, the eleventh and last man. It’s Rothgery. Considering that he’d just sat through ten other men getting their heads bashed in, Negan has to admire how well the man is holding it together.

“Hate to do this, Roth,” he says and mops the back of his hand across his forehead. He’d worked up quite a sweat doing this.”You know I got nothing but the fondest memories. But you know the rules.” He cocks his bat for what will be the last time and feels something like relief.

Then he hears a sound from below. It isn’t sobbing or pleading.

Negan looks down.

“Jesus, you fucking idiot,” Rothgery gasps through what Negan now recognizes as laughter. “You fucking dumbass!” Rothgery wails.

Negan blinks around at his audience. Everyone else looks just as confused. “Excuse me?”

Rothgery takes one look at Negan’s face and that’s enough to set him off in another hacking fit. “He—he played you, Negan!” He bursts out. "You don’t fucking see it! He played you!”

This is a new tactic the others hadn’t tried. Despite himself, Negan is intrigued. Anyway, he could use the breather. He lets Lucille rest at his side. “You want to put some more thought into your next words, Rothgery?”

“It was me!” The hysterical man gasps. “It was fucking me! The others— they had nothing to do with it. They weren’t— they weren’t lying.” He seems to catch his breath, glancing down the line of bodies. “And you fucking killed them.” He says, almost a whisper. “Rick says so and you do it. Just like that.”

Dimly Negan recalls how the others had denied their involvement at the start. He’d ignored it because of course they would deny it. He'd expect nothing less from the cowardly pack of gang-rapist fucks. They all knew the penalty. Rothgery’s no different. He’s just had a little more time to polish his act.

Still, as Negan regards the man kneeling beneath him, he thinks he doesn’t look much like a rat desperately scrambling for a hole. He looks more like a man who just witnessed ten of his comrades get brutally beaten to death and now has nothing left to lose.

“He lied, Negan,” He says, and the laughing is back. “He fucking lied! Don’t you get it? He knew you would do this! Knew you’d have to, and you…you played right into his hands!” Soon he’s laughing so hard that tears are spilling down his cheeks. “All of them!” He shrieks. “All of them! You killed all of them!! Just like he knew you would! You stupid fucker. If I had the chance, I’d do it again.” He turns up to the balcony. “I said I’d do it again, Rick! You hear me, you fucking psycho? I hope you fucking remember it for the rest of your goddamn—“

And Negan had heard enough.

When Rothgery stops twitching, Negan looks over the bodies of what were eleven of his top Saviors. The room had gone silent.

He summons the clean-up crew and tells everyone to get back to work.

Finally, he glances up to the balcony. Rick is staring down at him, still vibrating like electricity itself. Blue eyes are blazing, just as before, fists still clenched at his thighs, jaw still set. His mouth still makes a tight line but now Negan thinks there’s a shadow of a curve to it.

 

 

  
“Did you lie to me, Rick?” Negan asks from the doorway. He’d been standing there a while, examining the prisoner.

Rick turns to look up at him from the floor of his cell. “Yeah,” he says, so plainly that Negan almost laughs.

Instead, he descends.

As he pins Rick down by the neck, his own ragged voice splits his ears: “I killed those men! _I killed them! All of them!_ You watched me! Why? Why did you do that? You made me kill them! What the fuck! _What the fuck!_ ”

Through the red, Negan can feel Rick’s hands clutching at him, but they aren’t fighting, aren’t pushing Negan away. Rick’s skin feels warm under his hands where he squeezes. Warm like the blood flowing beneath it. _Warm_ like any mortal man. Beneath the ruffled clothes, Negan can see the old bruises already covering Rick’s body. So many bruises. Negan blinks hard and can’t seem to get his hands to squeeze tighter. Because maybe it hadn’t been eleven men. It was still one.

Suddenly, Negan lets go and Rick is left coughing and gasping on the concrete floor.  
  
“The fuck is wrong with you?” Negan pants, backing away from the other man for fear of being driven to more violence. “What the _fuck,_ Rick?”

After catching his breath, Rick stares up at Negan dazedly. “I’ll—I’ll kill you all.” He says with a voice worn hoarse. “I won’t stop ’til every last one of you is dead. And then I’ll kill you last.”

Negan stares down at the man, who is weaponless and allyless, alone in a cell. Still, he can’t deny the weight in the blood-shot gaze, and the brazen, fool-hardy assuredness Negan has come to know so well. Even as the angry marks blossom red on Rick’s neck and his voice cracks, Negan finds he can’t argue with him. He remembers Rothgery, who’d earlier stared death in the face and laughed outright. Negan realizes like he did then that here is a man who has nothing left in the world.

Negan locks the cell door behind him when he leaves. As he makes his way down the hall, feeling heavier with every step, the wailing voice follows after him.

“I’ll kill them! Every one! Everyone you care about! I’ll kill them all!”

That’s what the words say but soon Negan hears something else.

“You can’t protect them, Negan! There’s nothing you can do!” _My son…_

“I’ll kill everyone, Negan! All of them! You're all already dead!” _My boy… My baby…_

And it goes.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
